Gov. Rick Perry: ‘I stood up for the rule of law in the State of Texas’

Gov. Rick Perry defended the actions leading to his indictment during an interview on “Fox News Sunday.”

AUSTIN — Gov. Rick Perry continued Sunday morning to defend the actions leading to his indictment, saying he would make the same decision that led to the charges if given another opportunity.

Appearing on “Fox News Sunday,” Perry emphasized he and the public had lost confidence in Travis County District Attorney Rosemary Lehmberg following her drunken driving arrest. The indictment, handed down Friday evening by a grand jury, centers on Perry’s threat to veto funding for the state Public Integrity Unit, an ethics enforcement agency controlled by Lehmberg’s office.

“I stood up for the rule of law in the state of Texas, and if I had to do it again, I would make exactly the same decision,” Perry told host Shannon Bream, echoing comments he made Saturday afternoon at a news conference in Austin.

Later in the interview, Perry compared his indictment to the scandal in which the Internal Revenue Service admitted it had scrutinized some political groups applying for tax-exempt status more than others. Perry said both cases show “extraordinary concern in this country about the rule of law not being followed and too many things being decided in arenas that shouldn’t be decided from the standpoint of a government that’s out of control.”

Asked whether he was taking the charges seriously — as special prosecutor Michael McCrum has said he should — Perry told Bream: “I certainly take everything I do seriously. The rule of law, in particular, I take seriously.”

Perry cited support from unlikely corners as evidence of the weakness of the case against him. David Axelrod, a former adviser to President Barack Obama, tweeted Saturday that the indictment seems “sketchy,” while Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz told Newsmax the charges represent a “dangerous” pattern of courts playing politics.

“Across the board, you’re seeing people weigh in and reflecting that this is way outside of the norm,” Perry said Sunday, reiterating that Americans shouldn’t settle political differences with indictments but at the ballot box.